This application claims the benefit of U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 60/285,553 filed Apr. 19, 2001; U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 60/297,091 filed Jun. 7, 2001; and U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 60/329,771 filed Oct. 16, 2001.
The present invention relates to viewing audio-video content.
The amount of video content is expanding at an ever increasing rate, some of which includes sporting events. Simultaneously, the available time for viewers to consume or otherwise view all of the desirable video content is decreasing. With the increased amount of video content coupled with the decreasing time available to view the video content, it becomes increasingly problematic for viewers to view all of the potentially desirable content in its entirety. Accordingly, viewers are increasingly selective regarding the video content that they select to view. To accommodate viewer demands, techniques have been developed to provide a summarization of the video representative in some manner of the entire video. Video summarization likewise facilitates additional features including browsing, filtering, indexing, retrieval, etc. The typical purpose for creating a video summarization is to obtain a compact representation of the original video for subsequent viewing.
There are two major approaches to video summarization. The first approach for video summarization is key frame detection. Key frame detection includes mechanisms that process low level characteristics of the video, such as its color distribution, to determine those particular isolated frames that are most representative of particular portions of the video. For example, a key frame summarization of a video may contain only a few isolated key frames which potentially highlight the most important events in the video. Thus some limited information about the video can be inferred from the selection of key frames. Key frame techniques are especially suitable for indexing video content.
The second approach for video summarization is directed at detecting events that are important for the particular video content. Such techniques normally include a definition and model of anticipated events of particular importance for a particular type of content. The video summarization may consist of many video segments, each of which is a continuous portion in the original video, allowing some detailed information from the video to be viewed by the user in a time effective manner. Such techniques are especially suitable for the efficient consumption of the content of a video by browsing only its summary. Such approaches facilitate what is sometimes referred to as “semantic summaries”.
There are numerous computer based editing systems that include a graphical user interface. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,937,685 discloses a system that selects segments from image source material stored on at least two storage media and denote serially connected sequences of the segments to thereby form a program sequence. The system employs pictorial labels associated with each segment for ease of manipulating the segments to form the program sequence. The composition control function is interactive with the user and responds to user commands for selectively displaying segments from the source material on a pictorial display monitor. The control function allows the user to display two segments, a “from” segment and a “to” segment, and the transition there between. The segments can be displayed in a film-style presentation or a video-style presentation directed to the end frame of the “from” segment and the beginning frame of the “to” segment. The system can selectively alternate between the film-style and video-style presentation. Such a system is suitable for a video editing professional to edit image source material and view selected portions of the image in a film-style or video-style presentation. However, such a system is ineffective for consumers of such video content to view the content of the source material in an effective manner.